by Jennifer Schnayer, Summer Minister

A sermon given August 26, 2001

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

CALL TO WORSHIP

Good Morning.  We gather as a religious people to honor the web of all of creation.  To companion each other as we grow in our religious lives, even as we confess our limitations.  Come and let us worship together.

I can’t believe a year has already gone by!  I arrived here in Portland about this time last year, and was preparing to be your intern minister.  The week before I was to begin at the church, I got a terrible case of cold feet.  Will I like it?  Will they like me?  Will I be able to do what is asked of me?  Have I spent all these years preparing just to discover I do not have the ability to be a minister—studying about something, is, after all, so vastly different from doing that something!

I ended up calling a good friend, who kindly put my fears at ease: “You aren’t supposed to be good at it yet, you’ve never been a minister before.  You’re there to learn all about this, Jennifer.  Relax.”  Good advice.  I calmed down some after that call.  Sometimes just admitting we are afraid goes a long way to easing our fears!

Doubts and questions abound, especially when we are in transition, when we are making changes in our lives.

And so I have come to another transition time.  My time at First Church has come to an end, and a new intern is preparing to be with you for the year.

I have learned so much while I have been here.  Being a teaching congregation is vitally important to the future ministry of our Movement.  Your encouragement, honesty, advice and care have helped me to grow and learn every day that I have been here.  What I have learned during my year here is that I love the work that I have chosen.  You have helped me to overcome my cold feet!  I will be learning about ministry for the rest of my life, but the full life of this church has shown me so much of what is possible in the life of a congregation.  Thank you for that opportunity.

The past few weeks, I have been preparing to leave here and say goodbye to all of you.  So, I have had plenty of cause to reflect on the creative potential of transitions and on the real loss that endings mean in our lives.

There are many points in life that we are expected to honor changes that have taken place: the birth of a child, the death of a loved one, choosing to live in a covenanted relationship with our partner.  These pivotal moments in our lives are remembered with rituals here at the church: with child dedications, memorial services, weddings and services of union.

But there are actually many transitions that we move through during our lives beyond these.  We live alone and with others, retire, divorce, end relationships.  Our health changes—for better or worse; we move from one place to another, change jobs, make new friends and lose old ones.  In some ways, each new moment brings with it a beginning and an ending—we are constantly coping with some transition.

But much of the time we are so busy surviving, coping with the countless changes, we forget to honor the transitions, to recognize the impact they are having on our lives, and realize how we are changed by all that is happening in and around us.

We need to take time to call ourselves out of the busy-ness in order to attend to the present, to recall the changeless, and to notice how we are evolving.  There are many ways to do this.  Spiritual disciplines for one, but also taking a walk around the block or simply turning off the radio can help us to notice where we are—to be attentive.

Ten years ago, I was still finishing college, trying to figure out how to have as much fun as possible while still getting my work done.  I had never paid all my own bills, supported myself, or been married.  And I had certainly never gotten up in front of people and spoken—that was a terrifying notion!  Looking back, it can seem to me that all of it was just one change after another, always moving, always growing.  I am an energetic person, so staying still has never been my forte.

Attending seminary was another change in my life.  While I was packing up my things to move to Chicago four years ago, I came across something interesting.  It was an assignment from my 7^th grade English class.

My English teacher had a great idea, an assignment to write about what we thought the most important things in life were.  I titled mine, creatively enough, “The Most Important Things in Life.”  (Foreshadowing the agony I would go through thinking up sermon titles!)  It was stapled together with a nice purple construction paper cover, and inside I had written about the most important things in life on wide ruled paper, with big blue cursive writing.  Do you know what I learned when I read that paper?  I have not changed my thinking at all since I was 12.  The most important things in life are exactly the same for me.

It was comforting.  And I have to say I was proud of the 12-year-old me for coming up with such great things to believe in!  It boggled my mind to realize how much has not changed at all.  In the midst of our transitions, growing older and having new experiences, I think there is some essential part of us that is drawn to constancy.  That remains the same.

And so it goes in our lives.  Much changes every day, from year to year, over the decades.  And much stays the same.  Take the time to notice where you are.  What has shifted?  What is constant?

Still, when we move through life, some elements of ourselves are lost forever.  Even though I might still agree with what I wrote about the important things in life 20 years ago, I am by no means the same person.  One of the most important questions ever asked of me was posed as I was leaving Chicago to come here.  A Catholic Sister asked me: What part of you are you saying goodbye to?  How can that woman help you to meet who you are becoming?

As we evolve in our lives, we let go of parts of us that came before.  Sometimes we have to say goodbye to parts of ourselves in order to make way for who we are becoming.  This is the internal work.

But, we are also relational beings and the loss of people whom we have close relationships with effects us.  We suffer the real losses of significant people in our lives and who we are changes in some way when they leave.  When we lose our parent, we come to the edge of mortality in a way that we didn’t know quite as well before.  When we lose our partner, either by death or departure, something of ourselves is lost.  Learning to say goodbye involves both honoring the internal shifts and losses, and also saying goodbye to the people who help to shape our own lives.  And in doing so we can often discover what phoenix will rise from the ashes of our losses.

But, saying goodbye is not easy.  Some people won’t even do it.  In Sarah Orne Jewett's book The Country of the Pointed Firs, the main character, a woman who had come to Maine to write for the summer, prepares to leave and return home.  She has developed a friendship with the woman she has been staying with, a Mrs. Todd.  Her last exchange with Mrs. Todd goes like this:

“I ran after her to say good-by, but she shook her head and waved her hand without looking back when she heard my hurrying steps, and so went away down the street.”

No matter how difficult, learning to say goodbye helps us to let go of what is coming to an end and prepares us for what comes next.  It is a process of leaving well. 

Sometimes we say goodbye to the young person who was reckless and playful, sometimes we say goodbye to the person full of grief and sadness.  Sometimes we say goodbye to the person who was filled with physical vitality.  Sometimes we say goodbye to our independence.  Sometimes we say goodbye to the comfort of companionship.

What part of you are you leaving behind right now?  What part of you do you wish you could leave behind?  What part do you want to hold on to?  Take the time to honor the place where you are, the place you are moving toward and the place you have been.  Notice what has stayed the same.

When we are at a turning point in our lives there is a tension between who we have been and who we are becoming.  And there is a tension between the parts of us that change and the parts that remain the same.  Something is ending.  Something is beginning—you can feel it.  The energy that that kind of tension creates in us is what generates transformation.  We do not become a new person but the person we are is transformed by our experiences.

Every Sunday, the ministers robe.  Being at the beginning of my ministry, still a seminarian, I don't have a robe.  I told Marilyn, a bit embarrassed, that I had no robe to wear.  “Do you want to wear one?”  She said.  “Yes.”  “Well, I have a couple of robes that I think would look nice with your coloring.  I’ll bring them and you can decide which one you want to wear this year.”  So she did.  My first Sunday to assist here, two robes were waiting for me in the robing room.  I chose this one.  It’s nice, don't you think?

I put it on, feeling very much like something new was afoot in my life.  Borrowed robe or not, this was different.  It was a bit thrilling, even though I was nervous.  She asked if I was ready—of course not!  I wanted to run and hide, but I said, “Yes,” playing the role of the calm, competent seminarian I wished I were.  We left the robing room, walked through Fuller Hall behind the Choir, and I started to climb the stairs.  On about the fifth stair, I tripped on my robe, and had to catch myself before I fell.  I remember thinking to myself, what an interesting metaphor—don’t trip on your robe!  Or even, Don’t get caught up in your robe.  Ministry is a complicated calling.  And I was reminded on that walk that all I bring to ministry is my human self.  I am more careful walking up stairs in my robe since then.  But it makes no difference.  I still trip sometimes when I am coming upstairs.  It is just that now I expect it.  And so the metaphor has evolved from “Don’t trip on your robes.” to “Sometimes we trip on our robes.”  Sometimes transformation occurs when we remember what we already know.  All I can be is my imperfect self here.  We do our best with what we have, with who we are.  Our lives—with their gifts and challenges—contribute to the wholeness of creation.

When we attend to the transitions in our lives we discover that constancy is wed to change.  And when we attend to our life of faith I think the same discoveries can be made.

Our faith life is always evolving.  We are learning new things, discovering new depths of hope and despair.  As religious seekers, our faith is transformed by new experiences we have, by new wisdom we come to understand.  Our beliefs change as we grow and change, as we learn.  But there is a constancy that under-girds our life of faith.  That constancy is the web of creation.  No matter how we grow and change, there is still a common life we share.  We are all part of something much larger than our human knowing.  No event in our lives changes the fact that it is the unknown that unifies all of us.

When we take the time to acknowledge the changes we are going through, when we take the time to recognize what parts of us we are letting go of and what parts of us are coming to life or growing, we also reconnect with those constant elements of ourselves that ground us—who we are essentially, what we believe most deeply, what we hold most dear.  And we come to know something more—we recognize our wholeness.  In our losses, in our transitions, in our receiving of blessings, we are still whole.  The changes don’t have the power to take away from our whole, human and fully present completeness.  When we gain and when we lose, we are always a part of creation.  We are all connected, across generations, throughout all of life.  We have each other and we need each other.  Recalling that, I think, brings to our lives a fountain of peace.

But the goodbye’s are still hard.  I will carry you and all that I have come to know here with me for the rest of my life.  I wish you well in all that you do in your own lives, and in the life that you share as a congregation.  I will miss you.

PRAYER

Spirit of Life, our lives move so fast, and we are constantly moving from one stage of life to the next.  Please help us to know our wholeness in the midst of losses.  And help us be good companions to one another as we travel this path of life.  Amen.

BENEDICTION

Go now, and may your days be filled with a deep peace and may you know love that outruns your understanding.  Amen.

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Copyright 2001, Jennifer Schnayer.  All rights reserved.